Badakhshan Gold

Location

• Located in mountainous terrain in northern Afghanistan in Badakhshan Province. Location benefits from three international borders: Tajikistan to its north, China to its east, and Pakistan to the south
• 360km north of Kabul and about 50km north of provincial capital city Fayzabad (population: c. 50,000 people)

exploration

• Detailed work by the joint Soviet/Afghan reconnaissance geological programme in the region in the 1960’s
• Work was primarily carried out on the Veka Dur gold prospect including trench and adit sampling. Largest and most studied of the known gold-bearing quartz veins systems in the region
• Many of the main drainages for the regions were sampled for placer gold by means of panned concentrates performed in the field. Several mapped areas show alluvial deposits that were trenched, and samples for which panned concentrates were developed and the gold content noted
• Russian C1 + C2 Reserves for both Veka Dur and other quartz veins of 38.7Koz at 4.8g/t based on trench sampling

geology and mineralisation

• Regional geology is characterised by basement rocks of undifferentiated Archean to Lower Proterozoic age metamorphic assemblages; a sub-group comprised of gneiss, schist, marbles and amphibolites. Granite, granodiorite, and gabbro intrusives of Mississippian age are present locally in the southern part of the licence area
• Gold is present in outcropping quartz veins hosted in metamorphic rocks (schist, gneiss, amphibolites and marble). Gold is also present as very fine grained alluvial gold in many of the streams derived from the area of basement metamorphic rocks
• Conceptual exploration target types include: 1) low-sulphide quartz veins – mesothermal gold-bearing quartz veins, and 2) Archean style lode gold occurrences – greenstone-hosted (shear zone-hosted) gold in metamorphic host rocks

Infrastructure

• Access to the site from Fayzabad, 50km due north. Fayzabad airport is a domestic service airport 8km west of the city centre, 1,180m above sea level with one runway
• Not connected to the national grid, understood that the grid will be expanded to Fayzabad in the future
• Ample supply of water from the regional watersheds on the project area